Interesting social experiment. It would be fun replicating it in the US with 40,000 pennies ($400). That’s how much these artists spent.
Several people played with the coins. A few took selfies with them.
Eventually (as expected) a couple guys stole the pile. But the fun lasted over 4 hours.
http://circa.com/whoa/an-artist-leaves-15000-coins-on-a-bridge-watches-what-happens
Neat experiment.
I’m not sure it’s fair to call the two guys taking it “stealing”, though. Isn’t money on the ground free for the taking?
Kinda cool if you have 15,000 coins you’re not doing anything with, I guess.
I agree that it isn’t stealing; the money was left on the ground. (I mean, for one thing, if the people taking enough for a cup of coffee weren’t stealing, then neither were the last 2 guys.)
If it’s not yours and you take it without someone’s permission, it’s stealing.
That being said, stealing isn’t black and white; it’s shades of grey. Meaning some stealing is worse than others.
Stealing enough for a cup of coffee is not as egregious as taking all of it, but it’s still stealing.
So being “left on the ground” makes it OK to take something that isn’t yours? If I leave my bicycle on ground is it OK for someone to take it? Of course not. That’s a silly argument.
How do we know those guys stole it? Maybe they did what is probably the correct thing to do and took it to the police station.
The results I’d expect. Most people would be honest enough not to take the coins or suspect they were being watched. Someone would eventually grab them because they weren’t nailed down.
I agree that in this case, calling the cops to deal with it would probably be the move I made if it went beyond idle curiosity for me. If I leave stuff in the alley next to the garbage can that has even the remotest utility to anyone around here, I expect somebody to pick it up and take it. Perhaps that’s “implied permission,” because that is the custom here. Similarly, if I find ten bucks blown in my front lawn, what am I practically going to do? Or the occasional coin in the street or sidewalk? This situation doesn’t fit any of those, though, being a suspicious large pile of coins. That’s definitely something to phone in.
I’m sure the artist fully expected the coins to be taken. Part of the social experiment was to see how long the pile would last.
True. But taking one apple off the tree feels different than backing up your cart and clearing the tree of all its apples.
I agree though that seeing how long it lasted before someone loaded them up was part of the experiment so it’s nothing I would get upset over. I do rate “taking a bit” differently in this circumstance than “taking them all” though.
Taking enough for a cup of coffee is still wrong. It’s not the same as taking enough to buy food to survive.
The results would have been much different with more valuable coins. A large pile of 5000 dimes or quarters would be gone in minutes. 15,000 Pennies? Not many people want them.
So you’re arguing that picking a stray nickel off the street is stealing - just a less-bad form of stealing than picking up a dime, which is a less-bad form of stealing than picking up a quarter and so on up the chain?
I don’t even see it as “stealing” in a monetary sense (though I already know it’s abandoned property). More like diminishing a resource. People think the pile of coins is neat. Someone taking a small portion of them still leaves a “neat” pile of coins. Someone taking all of them removes the novelty of it entirely.
Granted, the first person still diminishes the novelty of it and the next would do the same, etc – tragedy of the commons and all that. But still less than the guy saying “This is all mine” and walking off with 100% of it.
I’m not sure it’s even a crime technically. Just wrong. Minimally wrong. Maybe I’m going overboard on this. I just don’t think a cup of coffee is justification for taking what’s not yours. But it’s hardly worth getting upset over either. I really need to chill.
It’s like that last piece of fried chicken at the dinner table. Everyone has eaten a piece of chicken. No one wants to be seen as greedy by grabbing the extra drumstick. Eventually somebody will indulge.
It did appear that the coins were being offered to whoever wanted them. I might take a handful and leave the rest for others.
The lights went out, then there was a yowl of pain, and when the lights came back on there was Grandpa with 5 forks stuck in the back of his hand.
It’s not stealing. The artist is guilty of littering and a couple of good citizens cleaned up the mess.
The guys who grabbed the pennies were the first one to intuit that there were enough to justify the time/effort to collect them. Most people view pennies as completely worthless. Most people who walked by the pile realized that there were no number of pennies which could be reasonably carried in pockets/purse to justify the hassle of converting them into useful money.
Most people probably looked at the pile and said, “there’s a huge pile of worthless coins.”
Except that, unlike truly worthless things, pennies are still capable of being quite worthwhile if you get enough of them together. The 400 bucks those guys made (less counting/deposit fees) was absolutely worth the effort they put into collecting them.
I honestly think the most interesting thing about the experiment is that the pile lasted for a full four hours.
Imagine if, instead of the pennies, they’d erected a seesaw in an area frequented by children along with a note that said “the first person to dismantle this seesaw and bring the intact pieces to [location] will receive four hundred dollars.”
Do you think it would take four hours before somebody fetches power tools and a truck, then shoos the children away from the toy to claim the prize? Probably not.
Of course the more apt analogy might be if someone erected a seesaw, clearly worth $400 or more without such a note.
But the psychology is a lot more interesting than either that or circumstance of the one you present in which a clear directive challenge is presented. And while partly connected with the unfamiliarity with making an estimate of the value of the coins and of amount of effort that would be involved in both carting them away and converting them to more usable currency, (your main point I think) there is clearly more at play.
Few would assume that a seesaw in a public location is theirs to dismantle and cart away. Most would assume that with such a sign placed it was acceptable to dismantle and to bring it for the prize. (Some would be suspicious that some prankster put up the sign.)
If the same coins were arranged into a sculpture I suspect most, except those who would otherwise be vandals or thieves, would leave it alone, probably (if at all) touch very cautiously and be upset if they caused it to fall by so doing. We have internalized social norms for dealing with public art (despite the number who hump the “Fearless Girl”)
$400 in ten dollar bills inside a plexiglass box mounted on a post attached the pieces put together with screws that would clearly take fairly little work to undo? Yeah someone would come with a screwdriver and take it but most I think would understand the value and the amount of work and still just look at it quizzically before walking by.
It is precisely the fact that people coming by have no rubric for this experience, even in fiction or cartoons, that makes it interesting. Kinda like “What Do You say to a Naked Lady?”
It’s an inkblot of sorts.
It would also be interesting to see how people behaved if there had been one of several signs placed with the pile:
“Take what you need, leave something if you can.”
“Take as much as you can!”
“Do not touch.”
“Play with me!”
None of the signs change the legal right to play with the coins, to take enough for a coffee, or to cart them all away.
Someone would likely still just take the whole pile in all cases. But I bet there would be lots who would do what the signs said. Most of us I think actually like knowing what rule is expected and will follow it.